Tracing Through the Constellations
by The Candlestick Maker
Summary: Stardust, space travel, defying the laws of astrophysics? Even if she always considered Berry an alien, she certainly did not expect this. Crackfic! to the break of dawn. Quinn/Rachel/Santana love triangle in space.
1. Introduction

**Tracing Through the Constellations: **Stardust, space travel, defying the laws of astrophysics! Take this interstellar journey with Santana Lopez as she tries to figure out what the _hell _just happened when she is taken aboard a spaceship, captained by no one other than Rachel freaking Berry. Pezberry/Faberry. Inspired by Mr. Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker series.

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**Introduction  
**

* * *

_Let me be frank with you: this is not a love story, though there is much romance in its content. It a retelling of a space exploration, which for the first time is being put to ink. There are no show tunes. But there are aliens, however, life-forms from galaxies far from your own in terms of distance and cultures. It is a story of possibility and impossibility; of love and deceit and other dreadful things like that. This is the true account of these events._

_And it begins now._

* * *

It begins with one heavenly white streak of stardust across the interstellar voids of the universe.

One intelligent ray which appears across the planet Earth's sky – a largely unintelligible rock, located approximately ninety-two million, nine hundred fifty-five thousand, eight hundred eighty-seven miles away from the nearest solar sun. Mind you, this is a relatively short distance for your average space traveler.

Outside the main route to Lima, Ohio, Santana Lopez - a feisty girl of average stature, average build, average rank and slightly higher-than-average intelligence - is too busy texting her girlfriend (who happens to be at summer camp) to notice that incredible streak of white stardust. But this is just as well.

For while Ms. Lopez plays an important role in the events that would transpire in the next the forty-eight hours, she is not the subject of this recount of events.

No, our story focuses on another girl on the opposite side of town, who was at this moment, re-calibrating a mechanized telescope to scope the galaxy - the ocean of stars which loomed above. A girl who, though by most means was slightly less than ordinary (in terms of stature, build and rank,) had a sharp mind and keen eyesight to boot.

When that extraordinary stripe of white dust shone across the computerized screen connected to her super telescope, Rachel Berry bounded for her sketchpad. Frantically, she sketched the outline of the glistening, almost-silver band that had spanned the extent of the small planet's sky. White bits of hot ash flittered to the ground. Thoughtlessly, she extended a hand to catch the bits of burning molecular space debris.

Upon contact this material would have burned right through the flesh of the humanoid life forms that populated the third ever-drifting rock from the sun.

Rachel Berry, however, was not from this planet.

So instead, the matter sparkled, glimmered, and glistened in the palm of her hand, before bursting into one quick puff of whitish smoke. She grinned, placing that same hand against her cheek, enjoying its warmth – which would have been agonizing for any other so-called "carbon-based life-forms" – against her skin. She glanced at the sketch she had perfectly recreated in a matter of seconds, ecstatic.

Yes, this was it.

That burning, sliver-white stardust was only used by a few space engines in the nearest twelve Solar systems - this had to have come from be her ship.

* * *

_By now, of course, as your narrator through the cosmos, I'm sure I've thoroughly confused you enough. So let me shed some light on this mindboggling predicament by starting off with this:_

_The person known as Rachel Berry never truly existed. It had simply been the name this former space traveler had chosen for herself some thirteen years ago, upon being stranded in the dullest corner of the universe, upon the dullest planet in the dullest corner, known as Earth._

_And unfortunately, this Universe is a big, big, emphasis on [big] place for a starship to navigate through in search of one tiny starship captain._

_Until now, that is._

* * *

Rachel ripped the sketch from the notepad and shoved it diligently into a black, leathery satchel she had propped next to her _fathers' _telescope (they were holograms really, but no one seemed to notice due to the whole 'social isolation' thing). No, no one seemed to even _want_ to meet them until that 'boyfriend' of hers, decided to propose.

And of course, she had to say yes to that. That is, the wedding and the debacle with meeting her parents. After all, she had to maintain the appearance of normalcy. So instead, she summoned the holograms – though they look near nothing like the photo booth images she had plastered to the instead of her locker some three years ago. Finn, at least didn't notice.

And that was the beauty of having him as a 'boyfriend'.

She wondered if he would miss her after she left this planet. Reaching into her satchel of many assorted goods, Rachel fished out a primitive Earthean telecommunication device and typed with dexterous fingers. It was a simple message, she decided this was best: _Dear Finn,_ _I'm breaking up with you. Feel free to not call me. -Sincerely Rachel._

She frowned. It was cordial, alright. Brief, to the point, but honest in intention. So what exactly was keeping her from pressing that measly SEND button?

Perhaps, it was simply protocol, she decided. Yes, if several years on this planet had taught her anything about the manners and customs of Eartheans, it was that when breaking bad news to someone it was customary to actually _be _there to potentially offer said person a hot beverage upon receiving this awful, soul-crushing news.

"Oh, yes." She congratulated herself on reaching this conclusion, convinced that she had finally gotten a hang of human customs. "Tomorrow, then."

Tomorrow, she would end this cover-relationship with Finn Hudson, then contact the enterprise and board the airship that could finally take her back to the endless bounds of deep space.

_She would need a sack lunch in light of this endeavor._

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**A/N:** If you like, then feel free to drop a comment in the reviews.


	2. Farewell, Earth! I Hardly Knew Ye,

**THE FIRST CHAPTER**

**"Farewell, Planet Earth! I Hardly Knew Ye,"**

* * *

_There are approximately seventeen million four hundred seventy-three thousand and one asteroids, two hundred billion stars, one heliosphere divided into two parts, and eight terrestrial planets orbiting Sol Terra – the Sun you Eartheans have been accustomed to._

_Though I'm sure you know, Earth happens to be a very unusual little rock to build a life on. The tiny planet was and is, respectively, a refrigerator cocktail – that is, it was and is a mixture of whatever ingredients the mixologist happened upon in the storage unit; the snowcapped mountains which jetted out from the eastern continent were only ninety miles less significant than the ones of the isolated planet Delta Vega and deserts spanned countries until they met lush acrid jungles, which housed a kingdom of primitive Earthean creatures. Though the tides were never quite as violet like the ones on the beaches of Andromeda Six and the sky never turned to hues outside of this so-called 'visible light spectrum' or so the lousy physic majors had insisted in high school – the highly-decorated captain of the Vitruvian starship had grown accustomed to it._

_Sort of._

_Human customs were far too cumbersome, she decided._

_And too flexible._

_It bothered her a great deal that Finn was an hour late for a get-together that he had established the time for._

_She wondered if it was just all humans in general. Yes, no. Maybe? She decided that there were very, very many new things a space traveler must therefore associate his, or herself with if hypothetically he, or she were to be stranded on this little greenish-blue rock orbiting the sun._

* * *

"Hey, sorry about being late… I was playing football with Puc- errr… just about to call you, when-" He stopped himself, panting a little as he shoved a suspicious football under his underarm guiltily.

"Let's break up." Rachel said almost happily as soon as he made his way to the table she had reserved outside of the Lima Bean, a homely Ohioan coffee shop that played homely music. As there were no signs of his response save the way his eyes looked as if they were about to pop out of his head, she took it upon herself to talk enough for the both of them.

"Finn, can I be frank with you?" The petitely built human-ish life-form asked the Earthman. He nodded tentatively, not knowing why on earth she wanted to be this 'Frank' person. "I never really liked you. You were just a cover."

A brief silence, followed by a cough.

"…So what? Are you gay or something?" The Earthman asked, unsure about how to go about the situation.

In an odd fashion, Rachel titled her head, resting her hand on her face, "I'm not quite sure." The thought had never occurred to her before. But nonetheless, she continued, humming a little under breath. "While I'm sorry for having wasted your time, I'm sure that the suggestions I've made during our 'relationship' will help you have success later on with another of your own species. Goodbye forever."

Half of her speech flew over his head, and he was already too tired from football to try catching onto it.

Instead, a twitch came upon the right side of his face. A tug at his heart told him to go after her, another told him not too, and still another told him that it wasn't worth worrying about anyway, and he proceeded to tossing his football up in the air. It went straight skyward, then socked him square in the nose.

* * *

_Small towns are very troubling places._

_In my travels across the Great Universe, I have nary come across much information concerning their existence- other than what I have learned from the time Rachel Berry spent terrorizing one. Outside your galaxy, there are only a few planets with less than a trillion population with the smallest cities containing at least seventeen million; still there are planets that have only one massive conglomeration where the world population resides, known as one-city planets. Therefore, it is notable to mention this excerpt Rachel Berry had ripped out of a library encyclopedia:_

_SMALL TOWNS_

_Lima, Ohio. Lima is a small establishment located underneath the shadow of the ever-growing capital Columbus. If one wishes to visit, one must be sure to head directly west of Sam Duncan's Laundry Mat and then drive until a creaky old sign reads WELCOME TO LIMA. That is if the sign is still there by then, assuming it has not played victim to the town's lack of infrastructure. Be sure not to drive too far or one almost certainly miss it due to its laughable size._

_The entry fails to tell you, however, that such small towns are the very bread and butter for facilitating unwanted run-ins with people who you really do not want to see precisely when you do not want to see them. So seeing as the Great Universe was surely acting against her at the moment, it was certainly very probable that just as Rachel Berry was about to dump her boyfriend, Ms. Lopez would happen to be on her daily route to the Lima Bean._

* * *

"Berry." Santana said, eyes narrowing as she did.

"Lopez." Said berry replied rather too kindly. As she passed, she continued humming in a way that completely irked the Earthean. Weirdo, Santana thought before pushing past the glass doors in the local coffeeshop. Sweet and soft aroma drifted past her nostrils and she smirked upon seeing her second favorite blonde at the counter already.

"Were you talking to Rachel?" Quinn asks, having already taken up a barstool by the café with a smoking cup in her hand. She sipped it coolly, careful to avoid burning her tongue.

Santana groaned. "Geez…You're calling her 'Rachel' now? What happened to Berry, or Toad, or Hobbit? We used to hate her guts in high school or did you forget about that too…?"

"Correction, you hated her…I was just in it for the peer pressure." Quinn said a matter-of-factly. She had the accusatory eyebrow expression down flawlessly; after all, she _was_ entering law at Yale in the fall. "Besides, we've graduated already – isn't it time to, you know, move on?"

"I think she's weird - I'm entitled to that. That's my right." Santana dismissed, resting her elbows on the counter as she stared hollowed-eyed at Rachel Berry talked to that oaf Finn Hudson from high school. He looked as if he was positively about to cry. It was magnificent.

"What's going on?" Quinn asked. For a Yale student, she was rather thick about some things.

"What does it look like? She's ripping his heart out."

Quinn shot her a look, offended on Rachel's behalf. Apparently.

"She wouldn't do that." The blonde one insisted.

"She doesn't seem to care." Santana observed, eyeing the brunette as she left the boy at their table. He tossed a football in the air and it hit him square in the face.

"Come on," Quinn asserted, tossing her half empty cup of coffee into the nearest trash receptacle. "We should go after her."

"Why the hell would we do that?"

Quinn turned rather suddenly, blonde hair moving in all which ways. "She probably needs a friend."

"I still don't see where _I_ come in…"

The blonde human grabbed hers arm and ensued to pull the resistant girl along with her. "Come on, stop being such an asshole, now…It doesn't suit you very well."

Santana scoffed. "Everything suits me."

* * *

"Attempting to contact the Vitruvian starship," Rachel projected this dialect that consisted mostly of constant-based phonemes, into a high frequency-emitting micro-tablet she had fished from her satchel beneath the various assorted goods. "Lieutenant, do you read me?"

A steady voice simmered through the static, "Yes, captain. We read you."

"Excellent." Rachel replied with a silky accent. "Isolated park, at the edge of Lima, an equally isolated town. Coordinates, as follows…"

The outer space visitor grinned to herself, it had been a long thirteen years. Finally, _finally_ things seemed to be going her way. Satchel? Check. Tying up loose ends with Finn? Check. Sack lunch? Check and check. Yes, the Universe seemed like a fine galactic force to be subjected to at the moment.

But only for a moment.

Then the Great Universe did an extremely cruel thing.

"Hey, Rachel!"

The spacetraveler turned quickly. "Quinn! What the bloody _hell_ are you doing here?"

The innocent fair-haired Earthling took a step back; it was not exactly the reaction she had hoped for. Quickly the clouds ahead were growing darker, wind whipped around the shell of her ears. Storm clouds were gathering quickly, but the blonde seemed not to notice.

"Yeah, 'hello' to you too, Skinjob." That of course was Santana.

"Get away! Get away both of you, now!" The humanoid alien screamed over a wolfish wind that howled through the landscape. Santana interjected something borderline obscene; Quinn was caught somewhere between them, looking a little disappointed. It might've rained, but no one was quite sure. The countdown from the micro-tablet was drowned in the nonsense.

"T minus fifteen seconds…fourteen…thirteen…." A voice on the other end of the frequencies was saying. "Four…Three…Two…"

In years to come, this ordinary day interrupted by only what nearby Ohioans would call the freak windstorm of the century, would be known as the day an inconceivably horrible crime act against intergalactic travel had been committed. Eartheans had been taken aboard the starship Vitruvian, formerly one of the finest vessels in the nearest twelve solar systems before its commander had been lost to this doomed little planet...

Because now, not only had one oblivious Earthean been taken aboard the starship - no it was approximately seventeen thousand times worse (according to the captain's calculations) because, now... now, there were _two_. And one of them was going to Yale...

"…One."

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**A/N:** If you like, then feel free to drop a comment in the reviews.


	3. A Long Ways Home

**THE SECOND CHAPTER**_  
_

**"A Long Ways Home"**

* * *

_Life, regardless of what species of the life form, will always depend on a series of moments._

_A lot can happen in moment. _

_For instance, a hummingbird can flap its wings at an alarming rate of up to twenty-five beats for second, though few people are so concerned with hummingbirds. Hypothetically, the average human being only takes a fraction of a second to blink or focus his or her eyes to varying degrees of light as they are introduced into a generally unlit room. Likewise, it only takes nearly a third of a second to slam a drawer shut, leading one to believe that if they were fast enough they could probably play a song using a wardrobe alone, provided they used the right type of wood. _

_Or you know, in a moment, you could be on a starship, where the commander general has inadvertently kidnapped you the summer after high school._

* * *

At this very moment, there was darkness and it was an odd thing. Darkness, that is. Complete and utter darkness to be even more particular. Because at this moment, Santana was dizzy and as you must know (I'm sure) being dizzy in the dark was something one was particularly keen to avoid.

"Santana, could you please get off me?" Quinn muttered from somewhere below.

Despite her sickness, Santana managed to get off her companion. "So that's why it was so soft under there."

"Did you just call me fat?" Quinn coughed, making her dark-haired companion roll her eyes. Out of all the things to be concerned with right now, Quinn was concerned with whether or not she had been called 'fat'. Before she could snipe back at her, the lights flickered on, the cabin suddenly illuminated by odd, nearly translucent lights.

They muttered their 'oohs' and 'ahs' silently, of course, but the sentiment was the same.

After another delicate moment, a door slid open. It was certainly not an ordinary door, mind you. If it were any ordinary door, it wouldn't have terrified them so much when it opened.

"Vis-it-ors?" The robotic creature, which resembled more of a trashcan with its distinctive, cylindrical shape, asked in pure monotone. "Vis-it-ors?"

"Yes, we're visitors." Quinn replied, already eager to shake its tiny robotic arms. "Pleased to meet you."

Santana slapped her back. "Well, you can be pleased to meet this thing without _touching_ it."

Turning her face as if she had just tasted something awful, the latina leered at the contraption. However, 'friendly' it might have seemed to Quinn, it wasn't having the exact same effect on her. On the off-chance that there would be another attempted handshake, she kept her hands wrapped firmly around the butter knife she had stolen from the café that morning.

"Well, tell us – what's your…function, exactly?" The brunette proceeded warily, untrustingly.

"I was instructed to check cabin pressure." The machine answered, terribly unaware of its own antisocial tendencies. Newer models were always as such, despite the fact that the Council insists that these new models were actually vastly user friendly. They simply lacked the rust of the previous models.

"Cabin pressure? There's plenty of pressure in the cabin!" Santana called out, the halls echoing with her voice.

"Not accurate. Pressure is only adequate. Not abundant." After a series of technical noises, which Santana assumed it used to change the cabin pressure, the cylinder face her unexpectedly. "State your business on this ship."

"We have no business," Quinn said cordially enough.

"Then you are stowaways." With a click of a button a thick, glass-like descended from the charcoal ceiling, like a cage, only without the freedom to stick your hands out between the bars or the abundance of oxygen. Pounding on the glass, which really mustn't have been actual glass based on the strength of the material, Quinn seemed shell-shocked. Santana, on the other hand, seemed as if she had been expecting this.

"Just when I was starting to like you, Bolts." The latina grinned, in spite of the fact that Quinn was already hyperventilating.

"I-I thought…" Quinn stammered, though she couldn't quite finish the question on account of she wasn't quite sure what she had thought.

Stagnant, the metal, cylindrical, trash-receptacle-like machine stared at them or rather just sat there looking at them with as much puzzlement as a robot can have. Which was virtually none. "Indicators show weaponry. Yes or no? Are you amicable?"

"Amicable! I'm human - I should be the one asking you that!" Santana's patience was wearing thin, so she shook her 'weaponry' at her reflection in the alien glass. "It's a bread knife! You cut bread with it. Or spread jam and butter over your toast, if you like."

"Documents not found." The contraption beeped away. "Indicators cannot verify the purpose of a 'bread knife'."

Santana shook her head in a fit of displeasure, which was an odd gesture of the inhabitants of the starship who had never really, ever seen such a gesture and therefore, could not possibly ascertain what shaking one's head in a generally horizontal direction would mean.

"Listen, okay. I don't want to make a mess of things. I just want to go home to my hot blonde of a girlfriend, so if you could just drop us off at the nearest pitstop in Lima, then we'll be on our way home." Santana asked, plastering on her 'nice' face, which was just really a version of her 'menacing' face that lacked the gritted teeth and eyebrows.

The cylinder beeped. "Requested denied."

Santana lurched against the glass, "I just want my hot blonde!"

And of course, as any other machine would suspect, its optical units moved towards Quinn, who was really too busy hyperventilating to really understand what it meant until the automaton muttered, "This is the blonde you are looking for?"

Quinn couldn't help but turn red. Santana also turned red but for very, very different reasons.

"You bucket of bolts," Santana replied, trying to kick the robotoid through the cage. "Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea who I am-?"

At that particular moment, there was another swoosh and the rather extraordinary door slide open again revealing the commander general of the enterprise. Santana's face soured, but the commander took no notice on account of having a little bit of an ego. The intense, overhead lights paled in comparison to the being. Because despite her earthly garments, she was, on all accords, far from human.

"Release them." Rachel ordered, unflinchingly.

The encasement ascended, back into the ceiling without a trace. Walking up to the cylinder, Santana kicked it, at which point it just stared at her and droned back 'my apologies.' Quinn, on the other hand, was starry-eyed.

"Berry, I knew you were weird but honestly –" Santana threw her hands up in the air, unaware of the fact that this gesture was also widely unknown to inhabitants of other planets outside of the current galaxy and one Rachel had mistakenly mistaken as _excitement_, the first time she had encountered one. She also didn't understand air quotes very well, but that was a separate matter entirely. "You just took being weird to like a new level. On a separate building."

"On Mars." Quinn added, trying to be helpful.

"Start explaining..." Santana gritted her teeth. "Are we - where I think we are?"

"Depends on where you think you are, I guess." The commander simply shrugged, turning toward the extraordinary, sliding, swooshing door once more without a sound and of course, Santana followed after her with angry, thundering footsteps and Quinn followed suit. There was more hand-throwing on Santana's part.

"Are you mad!" Which was really more of an exclamation than a question.

Rachel shrugged her shoulders and continued. There were several important moments between the cabins and the control room: In the first, Santana had noticed that while the rooms were very, intensely lit, the corridors were actually rather dull. In the second moment, she had found a series of irregularities with the ground below; it seemed louder somehow, not creakier, just louder. And in the third rather significant moment, she saw a silvery man with skin like ivory and eyes redder than red.

He saluted Rachel cordially.

At last they reached the control room; navigation systems tinkered away by a small crew of twenty or so engineers – all of whom had silvery skin and redder-than-red eyes. A large digital screen perhaps resembling a car's glass windshield lay at the bow of the starship, revealing the abundance of stars in the outer rim of the galaxy.

"Amazing." Quinn muttered, open mouthed. "We really aren't on earth anymore, are we?" Rachel nodded and Santana paled yet despite this, Quinn was sitting atop the world and the view was magnificent. "That's what I thought. Amazing…"

"Yes, brilliant! Splendid! Smashing!" Santana replied, snapping out of her coma and immediately reverting to sarcasm mode. "Just freaking terrific. Assuming, you're the captain of this...oddity, I assume you could take us back? As in, take us back now or I'll cut you."

Rachel smiled a deceitful smile. "Of course."

Beyond happy to hear this, the formerly very angry girl jumped, but only a minor hop, in joy. She clapped her hands together and began drifting into her own world while Quinn was already hovering above one of the starship's engineers, curious of what controls were necessary to keep such a large ship afloat.

In the chaos of it all, a silvery man, who understood just a lick of English, rose from his seat. He whispered something in his native tongue, a quick and smooth and flowing language consisting completely of vowels, and Rachel whispered something back, equally as quickly and smoothly and flowingly. Their back-and-forth continued amidst this display of the humans' ecstasy.

* * *

_TRANSLATIONS_

_"Welcome back commander," the silver-skinned lieutenant had relayed._

_"Thank you, lieutenant." The commander returned his cordialities. _

_The man wavered, unsure exactly how to break the news to his commanding officer. "Malik, you know that you cannot return them without the Council's approval."Malik, as you must know, is a rank, not a name._

_The Malik grinned. "Then I suppose we better attain that."_

* * *

Looking up from their conversation, Rachel found Santana's eyes, staring at her as if she had grown a second head or something. Though altogether, this was very unlikely.

"You'll be returned in the morning without hitch," Rachel reassured her, "For the time being, you can take some of the empty dormitories in the left wing. Lead them there, lieutenant." She cocked her head and smiled as she watched them disappear through those great doors.

* * *

_Beyond these stars, she knew, she must've known it well. There would be a little planet located on the edge of the nearest galaxy, only a tiny, inconstant asteroid that was a little more than an asteroid. A place where life was stirring and buzzing with the rumors sent by her ships communications - gossip which pertained to the return of the Malik. _

_And as far as she was concerned, there would parades and festivals, chalk full of Dust Hog candies. Chalk full of the one-city planet's laughter and chaos in the beautiful, sand country. Chalk full of assassination plots, already under discussion in the darkest parts of the city._

_Yes, she must have known. _

_After all, she was coming home._

* * *

Commander and Malik, Rachel turned toward the great blackness as indicated on the navigation screen.

Yes, tomorrow they would return to Earth. But _tonight_, they still had a great journey ahead them.

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**A/N:** Three months! What is this madness! Wow. I know I'm terrible, had to study for exams before May and then I completely forgot about this fic. Updating now, tho. Here's to (hopefully) more speedy updates!

Also, Malik is the Arabic term for king.


	4. The Longest Night Ever Part One

**THE THIRD CHAPTER**

**"The Longest Night Ever Part One"**

* * *

_Despite what the failed scientists and conspiracists (and perhaps some unfriendly lawyers) of this world would have you believe: _

_Impossibilities do not exist._

_Because while there are unlikely things, such as the statistical probability of a high school student actually liking high school, nothing is truly and organically impossible. Laws, both in society and physics, can be broken given the right circumstance. And while breaking societal laws could very well lead to one's arrest and possible detainment for the remainder of his or her natural life, breaking the laws of physics can lead to very extraordinary things. _

_One such __improbability_ was to happen tonight. 

_And in the essence of a great 1980's horror movie, it began with a thud in the night._

_The thud of a great ship landing._

* * *

"Did you hear that?"

Santana's voice shot through the musty air. Kicking herself off the sterile cotton bed, she sticks her neck out in the darkness, carefully extending an arm across the next bed. She heard Quinn groan when she felt the other girl's rough touch, stirring just enough to roll over in her cot and snipe back a curt 'No, go back to sleep, you idiot'.

Which of course, she couldn't NOW.

Stubbornly, the raven-haired girl sifted through the darkness, which seemed thick and heavy at times, only lessened by the soft moonlight that drifted through the small side window of the bunker. Thoughtlessly, she pressed her hand against the glimmering dust that clung to impassive glass. She didn't recognize the shimmering, icy blue dust that rose as the ship made its descent to planet below. Or the multiple craters which seethed with almost silvery, white-hot gas. Like most eartheans would probably assume in this situation - she rightly assumed this was _not_ Earth.

"Liar," She muttered angrily partly to herself, partly to the Rachel voodoo doll she had pictured in her mind. Well, if Rachel wasn't going to take them home, it seemed as though she would have to do it herself. Lightly treading across the room, she shook the half-sleeping blonde out of her stupor and whispered into the shell of her ear, "Wake up, sleepyhead. I think we have our work cut out for us."

When she heard the _wooshing_ sound of the great sliding doors, she mustered the strength to sit up right in the cot and murmured, "Where are you going, Santana?"

And when there was no answer, of course, she would have to follow along.

"Honestly, what do you think you're doing?"

Absently, Santana waved her off, marching through the empty hallways of the spaceship with light, calculated steps. Quinn trailed behind her with equal indignation. When the brunette noticed, she simply tossed her hair, eyes still heavily focused on returning to the control room on the main floor, hoping she had recognized enough of the way to backtrack in the fading light.

"Getting us home, what do you think?" She sniped.

"I thought Rachel was bringing us home."

Seething, the brunette stole a moment to whirl at her. She pointed at one of the side windows, the icy-blue planet below practically bursting to life with an explosion of white gases. "Looks like Berry took a little detour."

Quinn's eyebrows furrowed as the unease sunk in. "But she wouldn't-"

"Well, she did." Santana retorted, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip lightly. Another set of doors slid open and she took in the immense, extraordinary control room, which had fallen silent now that silvery 'things' were gone. She gazed up at the expansive navigation screen, which in bright and bold green letters flashed AUTOPILOT.

"What are you doing?" Quinn asked, watching as Santana jostled something in the near darkness.

Santana struggled with the switches, frantically looking for something that could redirect the autopilot to an incredibly inconspicuous blue-green ball in the Milky Way galaxy, "Trying to find a way to reroute this thing."

Quinn leaned against the wall with her elbows bent, "Don't you think it's a little weird that this place is so empty?"

To be fair, it was probably a fair question, but Santana was already far too focused on the issue at hand to dwell over fair questions. She sifted through the various buttons, switches and levers that she found on the control board. Some did fantastic things when activated in the right order, other combinations were completely useless such as the one that filled the room with bubbles and elevator music.

Quinn blew the soapy substance out of her hair, watching as the furious brunette reached for a crank in the dark with an impressive label. She squinted her eyes to read it, eyes widening upon the awful realisation that by the time she had screamed for her to stop, the crank was already pulled.

The floor beneath them opened up.

For a second they floating, then falling, then finally - with a hard thud, pressed up against the dusty blue ground. Quinn rubbed the ash off her face and leapt back when she heard the geyser next to her fallen body burst with a jet of cold steam. Santana was a few meters away with her face planted very deeply into the ground below.

"Don't pull that." The blonde finished before promptly collapsing.

A mushroom cloud of blue ash formed where her face planted into the ground.

It was going to be a _very_ long night.

…

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	5. The Longest Night Ever Part Two

**THE FOURTH CHAPTER**

"**The Longest Night Ever Part Two"**

* * *

What exactly is the sound of silence?

Well, it was certainly not this. The racket Santana made coughing the bluish-white ash from her lungs was softened only by the sound of Quinn's constant quips about being 'lost in space for all eternity and being eaten alive by friendly cannibals and how it would have been much better had the latina just for once listened to her.' Santana paid her little attention.

Stamping the blue dust off her trousers, the raven-haired girl drew a shrill yet shallow breath, "Quinn, don't freak out."

"Don't what?" The increasingly red girl quipped, as if taking personal offense. "Don't _what_?" She huffed once more, and Santana seriously wondered if she should answer the second time. Thankfully, Quinn cut her off. "I will react to this situation as I will so please."

Santana blinked.

If she hadn't known any better she would have thought she was talking to Berry, or at least Berry before she was a complete and utter alien. Wait? Wasn't that exactly how she had seen Berry before? On second thought, this explained so much. Despite herself, Santana fell to a fit of laughter that extended through the empty plains, which only made Quinn even more uneasy.

"Don't freak out?" Quinn repeated, staring. "_Don't _freak out?"

Needless to say, it seemed the perfect time to be freaking out.

…

"Where do you think you're going?" Quinn asked after an awkward minute's worth of one-sided laughter.

"Out. Looking for Berry."

"I thought she was the problem." The blonde asked while raising one eyebrow while crossing her arms.

"Don't be smug, Q." Santana whirled at the other girl with a frown. Like most humans, she particularly take to being proven wrong. "Clearly, she can fly this... this deathtrap. Which means she can take us home and it won't explode like it would if we tried to." Her eyes flicked back to the enormous, chrome-colored ship with fins and frowned Honestly, even when it came to her spaceships, the girl had absolutely no taste whatsoever. "So, freaking ugly." She muttered to herself as she took a few angrier strides through the darkness. Quinn followed, unwilling to be left alone with the separate racket that was coming from _within_ the chrome-colored ship.

At first there was a light in the horizon, the most minute beam in the sky that to any normal person, it may have seemed a simple star in the sky. Oh, but it wasn't. And as she neared it with Quinn diligently at her heels, the lights of the city rose from the icy-colored earth. Flat-roofed towers began to form from the blackness of the sky; the silty earth collapsed as the wind died in the distance from the piercing howl it had once been.

The majestic cityscape managed only one response from our heroes.

"Fuck," Santana swore, stepping foot onto city grounds, nearly twirling to capture all the sights at once. The terribly beautiful city with its perfectly sculpted, marble buildings and perfectly white dirt road, which shone in the moonlight. "Fuck it's beautiful."

Quinn frowned; she never had been one for swearing even before she had befriended the Hobbit and they signed onto the abstinence-purity club association thing in high school. Before she could say anything, she heard the rustle behind them and the sudden sound of doors being flung open. Voices began to fill the streets and despite the mantra she had recited in her head over and over again - she panicked. Wordlessly, she reached for Santana's face and pushed the two of them into the lingering shadows, sidling the shorter girl against the wall, which was the only place unlit by that pale, full moon.

"Y-you kissed me." Santana said, still a little shell-shocked from the experience. Then regaining some of her composure, she wiped the taste from her lips, "What the _hell_ was that?"

"Sorry, I just assumed us being human would turn a few heads, don't you think?" Quinn asked, trying to be helpful. "Assuming they have heads here that is." Her eyes shifted between the brunette and the emerging crowds. So long as they stayed in the shadows, they should be relatively unnoticeable. Relatively.

"Yes, but did you really have to do that?" Santana asked, frowning intensely. Yet another thing, she would have to explain when she got back home to her girlfriend._ If_ she got back home to her girlfriend. Her head whirled and she assumed it was so much more than jet lag. "Fuck." She muttered to herself, although it did little to alleviate her symptoms and stop the world from spinning.

"Uh, Santana?" The blonde mouthed, staring wide-eyed at something before her. The latina whirled, and reacted similarly with wide unblinking eyes. Her mouth dropped.

"Tell me that's not a giant hologram of the Hobbit in the sky."

"Okay." Quinn replied, nodding ever so slightly. "It's _not_ a giant hologram of Rachel in the sky."

"Okay, now say it like you actually believe it."

…

…

…

**A/N:** Guys! Since I have a late summer trip coming up and unfortunately won't be able to update after this week, I decided to do a double update. 'The Longest Night Ever' Part Two and Three. Hope you enjoy them. And thanks for sticking around for this interstellar love story.


	6. The Longest Night Ever Part Three

**THE FIFTH CHAPTER**

**"The Longest Night Ever Part Three"**

* * *

_For the most part, this planet is remarkable._

_Besides our all-important neighborhood bacteria, there are roughly eight-point-seven million known species that inhabit the planet. Six-point-five million of which are land-dwellers like yourself. The remaining two-point-two million, which reside in the ocean, are probably less relate-able to you but by no means does this make them any less remarkable. For example Beluga whales are remarkably social creatures especially on their annual summer vacations to Churchill, Canada._

_Alas, this is not a chronicle about Beluga whales and how remarkable they are. At least for the moment._

_This is a story however, about how eight-point-seven million known species along with the unspecified number of unknown species had been generally unaware of the happenings of an incredibly social universe. And this particular chapter chronicles what four individuals were doing at the exact same moment. Three of whom were busy on a far off planet on the outskirts of space - freaking out and such, and one of whom was on the remarkable planet known as Earth._

_Worrying about her girlfriend._

* * *

During the summer, Brittany Pierce had signed up for a counseling position at an All-Girls American Dance Training camp and so far, it had lived up to the expectations described in the brochure - 'a place for girls to have fun with each other all summer long'. Santana had laughed when she had read her the motto, something about it sounding incredibly dirty. She didn't quite get it, but laughed anyway. Santana was rather beautiful when she laughed. Coach Sylvester, on the other hand, was not so ecstatic about the issue and recommended that Brittany take up the open position at the cheer leading facility but somehow the thought of it hadn't ignited the same fire that dancing did.

She liked dancing and the arts.

Maybe, even after repeating her senior year she would pursue something in that. Somehow after the initial terror that was their senior year, the four of them had managed just fine - with Santana headed off to New York, Rachel entering her freshman year at NYADA and Quinn getting accepted to Yale. And maybe, she had her own ambitions, perhaps not as orthodox as as her friends but then again, one should never consider Brittany Pierce to be a clichéd person.

"Something in the arts," She muttered to herself, using her phone's browser to look up local arts college. Maybe if she took her GED, she could even get there sooner. She squealed, nearly tossing the phone out the window of the cabin and then chastised herself. _Mustn't do that, the other counselors will freak if they see those steamy photos of her and Santana. Again. _

_Speaking of which..._ With nimble fingers, Brittany typed her plans and musing about studying for her GED and quickly sent it to her girlfriend. She frowned when there was no immediate reply. Santana always replied immediately. But nevertheless, she shook it off. Certainly Santana was just busy - yes, that was all. Sighing, she fell back into bed, the empty cot she wished she could shared with her girlfriend, who seemed almost a million miles away...

…

Quinn frowned, sitting outside the extraterrestrial dwelling like a lost puppy. After they had found the residence of apparent heir-to-the-throne Rachel Berry, Santana had demanded that she stay outside and wait for the signal. She hadn't exactly indicated _what_ the signal was, just that she would know when she saw it. Naturally, she hid by the shadows of the near-palace like house and stared at the sky. _Were naked women supposed to fall from the sky or something? _

She blushed at the thought. No, no there was only really one girl she wanted to see naked - er, wanted period.

She let out a breath and stared at the nebulae above, which swirled with the bright colors of Van Gogh. She had just barely admitted it to herself, but she knew. Oh, how she knew! It had taken her exactly four years and a day to realize that she was terribly infatuated with Rachel Berry. Yes, the alien. Yes, the argyle lover. Yes, the girl she had ridiculed and humiliated all in an attempt to conceal her real feeli- well you get the picture. Not that it really mattered to her now.

All that mattered was that soon she would tell Rachel Berry how she felt and hope that in some alien way of life, it was customary to draw pornographic pictures of someone on the a bathroom wall as a sign of affection.

Certainly somewhere...

…

Rachel Berry was a woman of many identities.

To the folks of Lima, she was the annoying, albeit talented girl in the neighborhood. To Finn, she was the harpy who had dumped him the summer after graduation. To Kurt, she was the reason why he had to stay up all night making sure Finn survived the break up and to Blaine, she was the reason why he wasn't getting laid this summer. To Brittany, she was the adorable girl who argued with Santana and to Quinn, she was possibly, maybe the love of her life. And to Santana - well that was complicated.

_Santana!_ Rachel paced her bedroom, the utmost room on the top floor of her _real_ childhood home, stopping only to stare out the enormous window. She was going to have to make sure the coronation would run quickly enough so that there was enough time to bring those two back home, then certainly, she could return to governing her subjects.

"Argh!" Came the groan behind her, and perhaps her instincts kicked in a little too soon. She threw an automatic jab in the direction of the noise, though it only resulted in even more groaning. "Ugh, what the _hell_ Berry?"

"Santana!" Rachel exclaimed at the girl rubbing the bruise on her face. Taking her into her arms, she lifted the slightly taller brunette in her arms and carried her over to her bed, laying her flat across the floating apparatus. "Congratulations. Surely, that hit would have left many unconscious." She grinned, not knowing this wasn't the exact protocol one should follow after punching someone square in the nose.

"Yeah, congratulations." Santana murmured, sitting up right. Somehow, Berry had managed to reverse the headache she had been having. "Why weren't you retaliating like this when people were slushying you last year?"

"It would have raised suspicions." The brunette whispered, and Santana just raised an eyebrow, muttering 'Sure' as her only reply to the statement. She didn't mention that being a know-it-all, uppity diva with two doctor dads in the ridiculously conservative small town, Ohio, was not exactly keeping things inconspicuous.

"_Lima!_" Santana nearly shrieked. Her voice must've sounded much like Marty McFly when he first saw his mother thirty years before he was born (see Back To The Future for more details...). She tugged on the diva's arm. "We need to get back to Lima!"

Rachel opened her mouth. "Right after the coronat-"

"Is anything the matter, your highness?" A voice in her native tongue asked from the threshold of her bedroom, though to Santana to sounded more like a series of odd high and low notes, which Rachel returned.

Quickly, Rachel fell on the other girl, whispering against her, "Okay, for the next thirty-seven seconds don't freak out. It's not exactly legal to harbor out-of-orbit aliens on my home planet and if they see you, they will kill you. And then they'll kill me - regardless of my social rank."

"Wha-?" Automatically, Rachel pressed her hand over the other girl's mouth.

"The crew on the ship are my loyal friends and _they_ can keep a secret but anyone living on the mainland has grown far to accustomed to the absolute laws of this planet." Rachel whispered. "So if you want to live, for the next seventeen seconds act perfectly natural."

Slowly, Santana nodded, but the rustling came closer and the sound of footsteps grew more definite. Whoever was coming in, was coming in regardless and there was only one way to hide. With a jerk, she pulled Rachel's face to hers, the momentum knocking her under Rachel into the floating bed. Hidden under Rachel's curtain of dark hair, Santana watched as the intruder slipped back out of the bedroom awkwardly. Thank goodness, sexual matters were handle on this planet with the same discretion.

"Y-you kissed me." Rachel stammered as Santana realized she had said that exact same thing only an hour ago. Involuntarily, she smiled at Rachel's sudden inarticulate response, but her mood dampened quickly.

Now there were _two_ things that she had to explain to her girlfriend...

…

…

…

**A/N:** There we go. Writing Brittany's part made me a little sad because taking away Santana is like taking away someone's pet dog and replacing it with floss. Don't get me wrong I love Pezberry and Faberry, but right now, writing Brittany without Santana is tearing up my Brittana heart...

'til next time!


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